by Olga Masters
“I’d need more strength,” the old woman said.
“They take you sick,” Barry said. “Sick or well they take you. We’ve seen one. Clean. God, it’s clean.”
Now? wondered the old woman and didn’t know whether she spoke or not.
She thought of the child running home. Her shoes on the steps, tap, tap, tap. Her schoolcase banging the rails in her haste. She thought of all the child, her blocky little shape and those legs and arms and that fair, springy hair.
But not the eyes, bright blue inside all that white.
She dropped her head back on the daughter-in-law’s cushion.
“Well, bugger me if I care,” the old woman said.
THE SEA ON A SUNDAY
All the summer the cars tore to the sea between milkings on a Sunday.
The Went children watched from the verandah of their house built close to the road.
It was rented to them by the Manns, quite well off property owners who built it originally for one of the families they employed. But they later built homes near the main homestead for sons who married. The sons did the work previously done by employed labour so the road house as they called it became obsolete.
It had a verandah along the front and four rooms, two front and two back. One was a kitchen and all the others bedrooms although one of the front rooms, the one you stepped into from the verandah doubled as a sitting room. Anyone calling during the day sat on one of the two stretchers against the wall and if it was night they were taken through to the kitchen where a stove burned all the year round.
There were also two stretchers on the verandah one either side of the front door which Mrs Went kept neatly made the moment they were vacated by little Wents. The pillows were plumped up and the quilts smoothed out without a crease. Sometimes the wind whipped the covers about showing the shabby stretcher legs and Mrs Went would hurry out and smooth them out again, treating the bed like brazen daughters with their skirts raised.
The reason for all the beds at the Wents was the seven children aged between twelve and two.
They had no car and it was very often hard to find the rent for Arthur Mann when he rode up for it at the end of each month and there was no way in the world the Wents could get to the sea on a Sunday.
Their house was three miles outside the town and the sea another twelve miles off.
Since most people were small farmers it was their cars the Wents watched tearing through the dust and rocking on the gravel as they rushed to the sea.
It was one of the complexities of life that in summer the cows gave more generously of their milk and in summer with the sun at its hottest the sweaty bodies of the farming families longed for the relief of the sea.
They mostly rose as soon as it was light and raced through the dairy work with a speed similar to that of their cars racing to the sea.
They went without a meal after the milking (second breakfast it was called) and if their strength permitted raced into the water as soon as they arrived (although the weather had a devilish habit of turning bleak as soon as the old Fords and Austins and Dodges pulled up on the grassy slope just above the beach). The wives and elder girls were left to get the food spread out and ready after the first swim.
The Wents had no cows to milk and plenty of time for the sea on a Sunday but no money for swimming costumes and no means of transport and one of the children looking around the room one day wondered privately what they would pack their food in if through some miracle they got there.
It seemed pretty certain that the best for them was to line up on the verandah, feet dangling into the geraniums and watch the cars go past.
The verandah beds would be made long before the first car rumbled in the distance and the verandah swept and the folded cornbag shaken and laid neatly at the front door which was open to show the front room tidy, sometimes with a jug of gum tips on the mantlepiece. Mrs Went let a corner of a small table be seen tantalizing the passersby into wondering what other furniture had crowded it out, while the fact was apart from the beds it was the only furniture in the room. You could not count the stack of old suitcases in one corner that held some Went clothing (the top ones) and clothes not presently in circulation (the large bottom one).
Mrs Went swept the path too and scolded the young Wents soundly if they left the old wooden gate swinging on its hinges instead of closed with the hoop of wire holding it to the post.
Around half past ten with the fowls chased from the sagging wire fence that ran down the side of the house because they tended to squeeze in and foul both the path and the roots of the lemon tree the Wents were ranged along the verandah edge waiting for the first car.
Mrs Went took herself to the kitchen to start getting midday dinner ready. Mr Went would be there sitting on the old couch not too far from the fire, a strange habit for the summertime and stranger still was his attire of a flannel the colour of dirty milk and thick socks with working boots.
In spite of the boots Mr Went did not often work. He was a very talkative man and when Mrs Went trotted out to see a car go by urged on by yells from the children he (with much effort) would slide along the couch to poke his head around the door and stare his disapproval at the interruption.
She would return apologetic to resume her potato peeling as soon as the road was quiet again.
“They wanted me to see the Bartons,” she would say. (Or the Boxalls, the Gillespies, the Skinners, the Percy Henrys or one of the Turner families.)
This being a typical Sunday morning (so far) Horrie Went then launched into a harangue about the family in the car on its way to the sea.
No matter who it was they had no right to be going there.
“The Bartons!” he cried standing up for better effect and putting a long piece of twisted paper in the stove to light his cigarette. For despite the terrible struggle for the Wents to exist from week to week Horrie still indulged his desire to smoke almost continuously. Mrs Went (Bertha) may privately disagree with him about the Bartons and some of the others but she would listen and use some soothing words when Horrie became overheated.
“Clyde Barton!” cried Horrie not sitting down immediately which showed how strongly he felt, “He got that farm because his father was a cattle thief!”
“A cattle thief!” he repeated and Bertha having heard the story every time the Bartons went past to the sea on a Sunday had to pretend she was hearing it all for the first time to build up enthusiastic responses.
She thought the fact that Clyde Barton’s father long dead made some profit cattle duffing was not all that relevant to the present conditions for the Bartons who struggled as hard as any of the small farmers and restricted their time at the sea on a Sunday to less than three hours fearing any reckless treatment of the cows like milking them too late or too early and hastening the operation would affect their productivity.
Here was another point that called for scorn from Horrie.
In one way or another the Bartons, the Turners, the Skinners and others were putting pleasure before duty by indulging their fondness for the sea on a Sunday.
Particularly the Turners devout Catholics before the advent of the motor car and now almost every Sunday their old Rugby sailed past swarming with esctatic children waving from the spaces where side curtains should have been.
The Turners bypassed Mass all the year round being too ashamed to draw attention to a display of seasonal devotion by attending in the winter and all of this irked Horrie to boiling point although he himself was a Catholic. Winter or summer he did not step inside a church the excuse being lack of Sunday clothes and no car.
“Look at them! I don’t want to look at them!” cried Horrie when the young Wents shouted that the Turners were coming and Mrs Went went trotting.
When she returned Horrie had worked himself into an emotional state.
“That Godless lot!” he cried making a fresh cigarette when the other was not completely smoked. He flung down his dead match and Bertha flinched as Horrie could have used a light
from the stove and saved on the box.
“It’s a wonder they’re not struck down in the water! How could they be enjoyin’ themselves? They couldn’t enjoy themselves with that on their conscience!”
Bertha thought of the blue sea gently lapping the white sands of Short Point which was the name of the beach and the little Turners running and squealing on the edge.
Horrie sank down into the corner of the couch with his eyes on the fire and his cigarette burning between his fingers on a raised knee in old grey serge pants.
She wanted to say “Never mind, love,” but did not quite know what he should not be minding.
Then there was a shriek from the verandah that another car was coming but Bertha called out that she had her hands in flour.
“Them kids shouldn’t be out there on that verandah Sunday after Sunday!” said Horrie.
Bertha preferred them there to under her feet and rather enjoying the variety that Sunday brought tried without success to think of something to distract Horrie and get him back to his moody smoking.
Her heart sank when he got up and used a match again to re-light his cigarette.
“A man should put a stop to it!” he said.
“It’s like cheerin’ them on at a football match!”
He was not going to sit down again it appeared.
“It’s just like they’re winnin’ something! Winning!” cried Horrie.
He went through the house to lean in the front doorway and contemplate the backs of the young Wents on the verandah. Seven faces turned to look at him. All of them were happy.
“Hullo, Dad,” most of them said although they had sat with him at breakfast.
No car was coming then and the Wents were threshing their feet about among the geraniums rather like cooling and splashing them in the sea.
“Youse are breaking them plants doin’ that!” Horrie said and the young Wents stilled their feet.
Mrs Went heard Horrie’s raised voice and called from the kitchen. “Are any of them sittin’ on the beds?” No greater Sunday morning crime was known to Bertha than sitting on the verandah beds.
She trotted out evidently done with the flour to join Horrie in the doorway and look to the left for the sight or sound of a car on its way to the sea.
The eldest Went child a girl named Katie brought Bertha up to date.
“The Skinners just went,” she said.
“Was Granny Skinner there?” asked Bertha.
“Granny Skinner!” cried Horrie walking to the end of the verandah where Bertha had trained a grape vine to cut off the heat from the western sun.
The eyes of the seven young Wents were on the back of his neck.
“What I could tell you about Granny Skinner!” said Horrie and the young Wents waited.
Horrie stared into the grape vine assembling his words for the best effect.
Then he turned around as if ready and rocking himself on his working boots stared into the verandah ceiling where rust was spreading along a join in the iron.
But there was a spurt of noise in the distance and every young Went head swung to the left and every pair of feet with Horrie’s warning forgotten beat the geraniums and every pair of ears were strained and the squealing held back to come out of seven throats in a thin excited pipe.
“One’s coming!” cried Errol the second youngest glad to be the first to say it.
“Who do you say it is?” cried Jimmy the second eldest. “Everyone have a guess!”
They called out the Grants, the Gillespies, the Boxalls (forgetting the Boxalls had already gone) and the Henrys and then there was an argument because Jimmy said the Henrys and Katie said he meant the Percy Henrys but it turned out to be the Hector Henrys.
“I just said Henrys and its Henrys!” cried Jimmy.
“You meant the Percy Henrys because the Hector Henrys never go to the sea on a Sunday!” said Katie.
Bertha hushed them because the car was bumping through the belt of gums and she wanted to concentrate on the unusual spectecle of the Hector Henrys on the way to the sea in their old navy blue Buick.
The car had obviously been successfully tinkered with by the oldest Henry boys Mickey and Joe who had been working on it since the summer started and here it was returning thanks for their labours by actually going, not at any breakneck speed but toiling along with Joe at the wheel holding it so hard his face paled as if this was a way of pumping life into the laconic engine.
The car was level with the corner of the Went’s front yard when it slowed down and hopped like a wounded animal trying valiantly to make the distance. With each hop Mrs Henry and the three daughters in the back seat swooped from the waist up as if they had performed on the stage and the show was now over. Joe was clinging so hard to the wheel it appeared that it would take more than human effort to extract him.
The Wents on the verandah were utterly silenced.
Always the cars had appeared to speed up passing the house with the unspoken cry of look-where-we’re-going-and-you’re-not and the excited shrieks of the Wents pleading to slow down had been lost in the roar of the engine.
Here was silence and a car actually stopped.
They all looked to Horrie for instructions on what to do and Bertha stepped back and stopped herself in time from sitting on one of the verandah beds and looked at Horrie too and waited.
Not for long:
Horrie as if injected with the life that left the engine of the Henry’s car ran down the verandah steps and let himself out of the gate leaving it swinging in his haste to reach Hector’s side with a hand extended.
He shook Hector’s hand vigorously and laid his free hand on Hector’s shoulder.
Hector had his chin dropped onto his collar and Mrs Henry and the girls were in a little group as if assembled to be photographed although wearing expressions of doom.
Mickey and Joe were staring into the engine of the Buick.
“I knew it! I knew!” said Hector.
“The old bastard!” muttered Mickey to Joe. “He wouldn’t know a big end from the axle!”
“Hit him over the head with the jack,” Joe muttered back.
They had their dark rather handsome heads together under the bonnet.
“We’ll find a place to sit in the shade,” called Mrs Henry moving towards the bank opposite the Went’s house.
“Indeed you won’t!” said Horrie looking to the verandah and Bertha.
“Come up onto the verandah! Make room there you kids!”
The puzzled young Wents rose from the verandah edge as if the Henrys were expected to sit there.
“Run into the kitchen for chairs,” said Bertha unable to bear the thought of the Henrys ranging themselves on the beds.
Katie and Jimmy brought the chairs at once aware of the urgency crashing through the doorway with them—only two as the children sat on stools to have their meals.
Horrie still had his hand on Hector’s shoulder.
“Come in too, old son,” he said as if Hector had suffered a bereavement, which in a sense was true looking at the Buick.
Horrie just about bounded up the steps with Hector following. He took one of the chairs and Mrs Henry the other and the daughters stood about not sitting on the beds to Bertha’s relief.
“Is the kettle on the boil Bertha?” said Horrie and when she trotted past Hector he lifted mournful eyes to her and nodded.
In the kitchen Bertha paled as she stood by the table and nervously rubbed the surface wiped clean after she had finished her bread mixing. She looked at the shelf above the stove to a canister marked biscuits but it held only, as she well knew, a half empty packet of lettuce seed and some loose pumpkin seeds saved from a pumpkin Horrie liked which she intended planting, There was also the last letter from her sister Myrtle in Queensland.
“Bertha!” called Horrie from the verandah.
“Coming!” said Bertha although she stood quite still pressing her hands to her waist.
In a moment she went out and s
tood shyly in the doorway avoiding Horrie’s accusing eyes.
He sat with his back to a verandah post and his legs stretched in relaxed fashion along the edge.
Out on the roadside the Henry boys had parts of the engine spread out and they were already well covered in grease particularly their white shirts which appeared to be the chosen dress by poor farmers for the sea on a Sunday.
“Look at their shirts,” said the elder Henry girl wise in domestic matters although only fifteen.
“I told them, didn’t I tell them?” said Mr Henry to Mrs Henry who flung a fly away from her face with her hand and might have been flinging Hector off too.
“You can’t tell young ones anything these days,” said Horrie.
He laid his cigarette carefully on the verandah. “Not a thing can you tell ’em.”
“I could be havin’ me rest like I always do,” said Hector with a glance at one of the beds which Mrs Went saw and resisted an impulse to move up and guard it.
“We been up since four,” said Hector.
“Half past three,” said one of the younger Henry girls called Isabel.
“We got up at ha’ past three for this! I knew it!” said Hector so loud the boys heard and rose like two young trees newly sprouted and looked across to the verandah.
“You wouldn’t want us to have any fun, would you?” Mickey called.
“Call that fun?” Hector called back. “Not my idea of fun!”
“What’s your idea of fun?” called Mickey.
“Workin’s his idea of fun,” said Joe holding a spanner against his trousers and leaving a long greasy mark which caused Mrs Henry to flinch and the Henry girl to sorrowfully shake her head of dark brown curls.
“Ignore him,” said Mickey to Joe and as if they were the ones with automation they dropped in the one motion onto their haunches and began to put the engine parts together.
“You’re wasting your time like I told you in the first place!” Hector called out.
The Henry boys set their jaws and worked faster.
Horrie put his head back against the verandah post and smoked.
“When are we going to the sea?” piped up the smallest Henry girl.